Friday, June 5, 2009

Last night I took Charlie to an Indianapolis Indians baseball game, tickets and refreshments courtesy of the rep from my printer at work (thanks Lorrie!). It was a beautiful night to be at the ball field.

Mike dropped Charlie off at my office and from there we headed to the downtown stadium. Charlie was beyond excited. He had his baseball glove with him so he could catch foul balls. (Never mind that the glove was wet because he'd left it in the yard during Wednesday's rainstorm.)

We parked and headed into the stadium. I could barely get him to the suite where our seats were located because he wanted to stop on the lower level to watch the game from under the bleachers. Once we got upstairs, Charlie gave a courtesy hello to Lorrie and then wasted no time taking a seat in the front row of the suite.

I, of course, wasted no time in getting some food, which Charlie couldn't bothered by for fear he might miss an errant ball. Before I'd gotten the tomato on my hamburger, Charlie burst in the suite again, yelling, "Mom! You just missed a double play!" The people watching the game from inside the suite were quite amused.

The whole evening was a lot of fun. I met some great people who are also clients of Lorrie's (shout out to Liz, Megan and Ashley). Charlie unknowingly entertained the crew in our suite with his impromptu hip hop/urban/breakdance moves to one of the songs played over the loudspeaker. We saw a homerun; well, I saw the running, not the actual hit because as luck would have it I was chatting when the batter swung.

The only downsides to the night were that the Indians lost the first game (not sure about the second, we left at 10pm) and that Charlie didn't catch a foul ball. That's all right, he did snag two hot dogs, about four giant cookies and who knows how much popcorn.

On the way back to the car, I put my arm around Charlie, gave him a big squeeze and said "Charlie, this was a really fun date!"

To which he replied, "Ewwww! Gross! Don't call it a date!"

"Well, what was it then?" I asked.

"It was mother-oldest-son-fun-time."

Apparently, unlike "grandma," "date" IS a dirty word, at least if you're 9 years old.

You know what's so funny? He didn't want to call it a date, but when I told him to be careful because we were crossing streets with busy traffic, he had no trouble reaching down and holding my hand! I didn't say anything about it to him because I didn't want to ruin it. :)

Jeremy and I used to have a night every week that we called "date night." We would watch Smallville together and eat popcorn together. The date word didn't bother him, but I can see where it could weird out a kid! ;)